Jazz-Leaning Piano Man Brings the Great American Songbook to Lincoln Center Reunion

At 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 8, Garcia will be give a special performance in Pope Auditorium for the Fordham community. Register online. (Photos courtesy of Eric Yves Garcia)Last year on his birthday, as Eric Yves Garcia, FCLC ’00, walked by the Lincoln Center campus on his way home from a cabaret gig, he realized that it was 20 years to the day that he had moved onto campus as a Fordham freshman.

Garcia has been playing piano and singing in cabaret performances for about 10 years now. Will Friedwald of The Wall Street Journal has called him “incredibly moving and very funny, often at the same time,” and Stephen Holden of The New York Times declared he has “genuine star quality.”

Garcia grew up playing the piano and singing standards by the likes of Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. These older songs “always made sense to me,” he says. But his Fordham theater training has also helped him hone his cabaret craft.

“It’s a little more of a dramatic thing,” Garcia says of his profession. “I find myself calling back on what a lot of my professors at Fordham insisted upon regarding a monologue or a scene. There is a narrative beginning, middle, and end to these songs.”

As a student, Garcia would often play the piano while his fellow cast members would break down sets, or he would “go into Pope Auditorium very late at night and play until one of the security guards would come in and tell me to stop, that people were getting fed up,” he laughs.

Now he’s excited to share his repertoire with his fellow alumni. “Oddly, when you have to do something like this, it can be a little more nerve-racking than just doing a club gig or a show, because these might well be people you know,” Garcia says. “And it matters more because you have an association with it.

“But it’s a special kind of honor to be invited to offer what you do—however it’s evolved since you left. I’m excited to come back and celebrate.”

This complimentary cabaret performance is open to all Fordham alumni, faculty, and staff. So join us at 5:30 p.m. on June 8 in Pope Auditorium for a glass of bubbly and a bite to eat as you enjoy the artistry of this alumnus pianist and singer. Register online.

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